DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from the Applicant's Description) This proposal requests five years (1999-2003) of support for the Penn State National Family Issues Symposium, an annual interdisciplinary conference designed to focus attention on under-studied issues that are important in terms of understanding family structure and functioning and their impact on the development of children and youth. The proposal builds on a five-year tradition of annual symposia that have been co-organized by faculty from Penn State's Population Research Institute (Booth) and Department of Human Development and Family Studies (Crouter), with additional intellectual and financial support from numerous other departments and colleges. The goals of the symposium series are (1) to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and to stimulate research on family issues, (2) to promote scholarly excellence, and (3) to identify promising issues in the field of family studies that are not receiving sufficient attention from researchers and which would not ordinarily be covered by professional societies, foundations, or government agencies. The hope is that the symposium series will "jump start" research in important, but understudied areas.